10 February, 2017

Record number of civilians killed and injured in 2016 Afghan airstrikes

Air
attacks by Afghan and international forces caused a total of 590
civilian casualties in 2016 (250 deaths and 340 people injured),
almost double that of 2015.

by
Jack Serle

Part
4 - Strikes in civilian-populated areas

With much of
Afghanistan’s fighting last year taking place in civilian-populated
areas, air attacks also carry a considerable risk of civilian harm.

Unama urged
“an immediate halt to the use of airstrikes in
civilian-populated areas and calls for greater restraint in the use
of airstrikes where civilians are likely to be present.”

More than
half the civilian casualties from US and Afghan air attacks came in
three provinces: Kunduz in the north and Helmand in the south, where
the Taliban has been pressing hard, and in south-eastern Nangarhar
province where the Taliban and Islamic State’s Afghan franchise are
fighting each other and the Afghan security forces.

The US has
focused considerable firepower on Nangarhar with air strikes and
operations by special forces. This has translated into a near-400%
increase in civilian casualties from operations by US and other
international forces. A total of 37 people were killed and 52 injured
in 13 aerial operations in the province last year, compared to 11
people deaths and seven injured in ten operations in 2015.

The annual
Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict report from Unama looks
in-depth at the devastation wreaked by all sides in the Afghan
conflict. Since 2009, almost 25,000 civilians have been killed or
injured in what Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights, today called a “senseless,
never-ending conflict.”

“It is
about time the various parties to the conflict ceased the relentless
commission of war crimes,” he said.